Everywhere I look I can’t help but see news of the $1.2 trillion dollar deficit planned for 2009. This got me thinking: where’s the money going to come from? According to The United States Department of the Treasury, the top holders of US treasuries , in order, are China, Japan, The United Kingdom, Caribbean Banking Centers, and Oil Exporters. This begs the question: where is the government going to borrow the money from? As far as I can tell, the top holders are not in the most prosperous of times, and I see only one buyer, The Federal Reserve. While The Federal Reserve buying treasuries may not seem that bad, think about how that works. The Treasury has to print money in order to buy the treasuries. Therefore, there are more dollars in the world; thus devaluing our currency. This devaluing of the dollar helps institutions with large amounts of debt (like the US government with over $10 trillion in debt) and hurts responsible individuals that keep reserves of cash instead of using credit. This devaluing of our currency is the widely unknown inflation tax.

With a brief look at the top five treasury buyers I found that none of them are looking to be very promising purchasers in the future. China, the largest purchaser of US treasuries, is not in the best of times. With news of China’s near $600 billion bailout it would be surprising to find China rapidly expanding its purchasing of treasuries. When looking at Japan’s economy there seems to be a consensus that Japan’s economy is looking at negative or no growth for 2009. Consequently, Japan is looking at a $110 billion dollar bailout. Combining the shrinking economy with increases of spending on Japan’s own economy would leave the second largest treasury holder little money left to purchase more U.S. treasuries. The third largest purchaser, The United Kingdom, is also not looking promising as a large purchaser of treasuries. Not only is the United Kingdom looking at a recession in 2009, it’s also looking at more massive deficit spending to help its own ailing economy.

Numbers four (Caribbean Banking Centers) and five (Oil Exporters) on the top five treasury buyers list are in worse conditions than the top three. In the current financial climate, the Caribbean Banking Centers may be the least likely to buy treasury bills. Can you guess what industry holds a majority of the money in the Caribbean Banking Centers? Yes, that’s right, banks. Looking at the current situation of most banks, I can’t imagine banks purchasing very many treasuries over the next couple of years. The fifth largest purchaser of US treasuries is the Oil Exporters. Crude oil closed today at $40.83 a barrel, down over $100 from its peak of $147. The low price of oil forces Venezuela, Iran, and many of other prominent oil exporting nations to make spending cuts. With the budget cuts coming to these countries I don’t foresee large increases in U.S. treasury purchases.

China is already spending $600 billion on its own economy. Japan and the United Kingdom are having to borrow the money to fund their economies. All the while, banks are in their worst condition in years and oil has had one of the largest price drops in history. Are these former treasury purchasers really going to be able to buy U.S. treasuries and fund our economy? Without the ability to borrow trillions and trillions of dollars, the U.S. government is faced with the hard political choice of cutting spending or the easy choice of printing money and pushing the problem off to another day. Which do you think they’re going to pick? Help make spending cuts an easier choice. Write to your local senators and congressmen and ask them to vote down any bailout or stimulas package. After all, they work for you.

Ever read a book that changed your life? Here is a list of books that have substantially changed the the way I handle different aspects of my life. These books helped me become self sufficient, more efficient with my time, gain control of my money, and inspired me to be above average (maybe Congress and the Senate should read some of these books). The books are listed in no particular order, as they are equally important and build on each other.

The first book is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen R. Covey. I read this book when I was in my early teens and the biggest lesson I learned from the book is to be in true control of my life. In the the words of Covey, to be proactive instead of reactive. The book also gave me tools to become more efficient. It got me started on using a calendar and organizing tasks by their priority. This book is filled with timeless principles and is a great read for a person of any age.

The second book is The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. The total money makeover has transformed how my family and me manage money. This book gives readers simple and easy to follow steps to get out of debt forever and to build wealth. The plan in the book gives readers a highly motivational process to relieve them of debt. This book is not for someone looking for a quick fix to their money problems, but for someone looking for a fix that will work. But don’t think this book is just for poor people. This book can help people with an income of $250,000 or more per year.

The last book is From Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. While this book may seem like it only applies to business, it will inspire any individual, organization, or business to take the extra steps to become great. While the average person may think this book will be boring, it in fact, is very interesting. This book has inspired me to not get discouraged when things don’t immediately take off. Good to Great taught me not to look for a quick solution, but to apply consistent effort toward a carefully planned goal and eventually I will achieve it. Even if business books are not your thing I highly encourage people to read this book as they will find great principles and the interesting stories behind truly great CEO’s and leaders.

Another book that deserves honerable mention is Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter. I just finished this book about a week ago so I can’t tell if it will have a lasting change on my life. But, from what I can tell, it reinforces the principles taught by the other books I’ve mentioned. Hope everybody enjoys reading these books. And remember, the best way to help yourself is to continue reading new material throughout your whole life. Take the time to listen to other points of view and most of all, look for the good in every situation.

This past Tuesday I on my Bittorrent client to download a few movies. To my surprise my upload speed “soared” to 80 – 130 kb/s+. I know this doesn’t seem that fast, but ever since Comcast started shaping Bittorrent traffic I haven’t seen upload speeds greater than 40 kb/s. My first thought was that this must be a fluke but, after half an hour the upload speed seemed to maintain itself.

Next, I wanted to test the latency. Previously, whenever I started a Bittorrent client the latency on my families network would increase dramatically. The high latency made Skype calls, Xbox Live, or any other service that depended on a low latency connection impossible to use. The first test I performed was a test on Xbox Live. I had my younger brother sign into Xbox Live, because he plays more frequently than me and knows how the service normally performs. After fifteen minutes my younger brother confirmed that Xbox Live had no more lag than usual, even though I was uploading torrents at 80 kb/s.

Skype was the next test. My dad frequently makes phone calls over Skype to save minutes on his cell phone bill. Previously, I would hear him yelling at me to pause my BitTorrent transfers because they were causing his Skype calls to drop. Needless to say, I was pretty anxious to see if I could run BitTorrent while he was on Skype (which even with an ISP that doesn’t traffic shape is a pretty amazing feat). That Tuesday evening my Dad made a Skype call to a friend from Arizona. After fifteen minutes in Skype, my dad confirmed that that call was working flawlessly even though I was using BitTorrent. (more…)